(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a physical movement analyzer for performing analysis on postures and movements based on physical feature amounts that are extracted at the time when a human moves. More specifically, the present invention relates to a physical movement analyzer or the like that is used for a walking ability test in a rehabilitation system or a sport training system.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In view of the status of a recently aging society, apparatuses and medical treatments for rehabilitating elderly people or people with a leg disorder have drawn attention. Especially, quantitatively grasping the degree of recovery from a leg disorder (or deterioration of a leg disorder) of a patient with an artificial joint, a patient with a degenerative joint disease or the like is an important problem, and thus apparatuses or the like for solving this problem have been proposed conventionally. For example, refer to Japanese Laid-Open Patent application No. 1998-111940 (related art 1), Japanese Laid-Open Patent application No. 1993-180861 (related art 2) and Japanese Laid-Open Patent application No. 1993-274434 (related art 3).
The “body feature point detecting apparatus and physical movement analyzer” of the related art 1 performs movement analysis based on collected characteristics of physical movements for every human body part by shooting physical movements. Also, the “movement analyzer” of the related art 2 includes magnetic sensors corresponding to respective human body parts that detect the magnetic parts that are formed on a magnetic recording medium so as to measure movement amount quantitatively. Further, in addition, in the “movement analyzing method and its apparatus” of the related art 3, a bright gage mark is attached to a part of a human body so that the moving object can be recorded and a movement analysis is performed based on the trajectory of the gage mark.
Also, in general, deteriorated posture retention of the elderly people is the fundamental cause that makes them topple over to be a bedbound person. This deteriorated posture retention is remarkably observable in walking. In the case of elderly people, for example, deterioration in posture retention reduces walking speed and narrows walking strides. As a compensation for this, they enlarge the distance between the right leg and the left leg (called “stance” from here) so as to secure stability.
Therefore, there is a need to measure stances at the time of walking. In general, Gravicorders are used as a tool for performing human movement analysis. The feature of this technique is to perform movement analysis of the center of gravity at the time when a person gets on the load detection board which is previously set on a straight floor. For example, refer to Patent No. 2760472, related art 4.
However, in a technique using an image analyzing method and the like shown in the above-mentioned related art 1 to 3, it takes a lot of labor to collect and analyze data because the handling of the data is huge and redundant, and thus there emerges a problem that it is rarely used at sites of rehabilitation or sports training which have restrictions on time, cost and so on.
Also, in the case of the technique shown in the above-mentioned related art 4, areas where a person makes movements, kinds of movements, postures and the like are limited because measurement of human physical movements (trajectory) should be done by making a person get on the load detection board, which is troublesome for a person and a measurer (for example, a medical staff member and a caregiver). Also, in this case, there is a problem that measuring a walking state is impossible.